Famous Barb Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Barb poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous barb poems. These examples illustrate what a famous barb poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Why, Bill! you don't suppose
I'm scared of that there `babbling brook'? Whatever you say -- goes."
A real live man was Barb-wire Bill, with insides copper-lined;
For "barb-wire" was the brand of "hooch" to which he most inclined.
They knew him far; his igloos are on Kittiegazuit strand.
They knew him well, the tribes who dwell within the Barren Land.
From Koyokuk to Kuskoquim his fame was everywhere;
And he did love, all life above, that little Julie Claire,
The lithe, white...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ter it seemed
less doughty in swimming whom death had seized.
Swift on the billows, with boar-spears well
hooked and barbed, it was hard beset,
done to death and dragged on the headland,
wave-roamer wondrous. Warriors viewed
the grisly guest.
Then girt him Beowulf
in martial mail, nor mourned for his life.
His breastplate broad and bright of hues,
woven by hand, should the waters try;
well could it ward the warrior’s body
that battle should break on his breast in ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ais to me:
Borne by my steed, or wafted by my sail,
Across the desert, or before the gale,
Bound where thou wilt, my barb! or glide, my prow!
But be the star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika! share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the cloud away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
Blest — as the Mu...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...kin' some letters almost
As much as a mile to the post,
An' "mind you come back with the change!"
Me!
Me that saw Barberton took
When we dropped through the clouds on their 'ead,
An' they 'ove the guns over and fled --
Me that was through Di'mond I'll,
An' Pieters an' Springs an' Belfast --
From Dundee to Vereeniging all --
Me that stuck out to the last
(An' five bloomin' bars on my chest) --
I am doin' my Sunday-school best,
By the 'elp of the Squire an' 'is wife
(Not ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...d tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With ...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...itting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love.
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,
Bore thee far from me;
My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
Did companion thee.
Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
Or the death they bear,
The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
With the wings of care;
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
Shall mine cling ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sitting in the light
Of thy looks my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks my love.
Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight 5
Bore thee far from me;
My heart for my weak feet were weary soon
Did companion thee.
Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed
Or the death they bear 10
The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
With the wings of care;
In the battle in the darkness in the need
Shall mine clin...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...winds and tides can I avail:---
But thou canst.---Be thou therefore in the van
Of circumstance; yea, seize the arrow's barb
Before the tense string murmur.---To the earth!
For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.
Meantime I will keep watch on thy bright sun,
And of thy seasons be a careful nurse."---
Ere half this region-whisper had come down,
Hyperion arose, and on the stars
Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide
Until it ceas'd; and still he kept them wide:
And s...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...e-pelican
Of lonely piety.
Basilisk, cockatrice,
Flocked to his homilies,
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barb?d slings,
With eager dragon-eyes;
Great rats on leather wings
And poor blind broken things,
Foul in their miseries.
And ever with Him went,
Of all His wanderings
Comrade, with ragged coat,
Gaunt ribs—poor innocent—
Bleeding foot, burning throat,
The guileless old scapegoat;
For forty nights and days
Followed in Jesus’ ways,
Sure guard behind ...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.
She sends me abroad to try my wings
and I come back to her. I would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.
I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,
and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my flight.
Never beyond my sight, she says.
She trains me ...Read more of this...
by
Duncan, Robert
...oots down;
What shudders run through all that animal blood?
What is this sacrifice? Can someone there
Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star?
Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through,
A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang
A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow;
A woman, and an arrow on a string;
A pierced boy, image of a star laid low.
That woman, the Great Mother imaging,
Cut out his heart. Some master of design
Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin.
...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...ing good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire.. . .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.
Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o’clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among th...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...en.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.
The birdmen drone
in the blue; it is steel
a motor sings and zooms.
Steel barb-wire around The Works.
Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works.
Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from jo...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...that Marion leads¡ª
The glitter of their rifles
The scampering of their steeds. 40
'T is life to guide the fiery barb
Across the moonlit plain;
'T is life to feel the night-wind
That lifts his tossing mane.
A moment in the British camp¡ª 45
A moment¡ªand away
Back to the pathless forest
Before the peep of day.
Grave men there are by broad Santee
Grave men with hoary hairs; 50
Their hearts are all with Marion
For Marion are their prayers.
An...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...be borne; let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.
And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ais to me:
Borne by my steed, or wafted by my sail,
Across the desert, or before the gale,
Bound where thou wilt, my barb! or glide, my prow!
But be the star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika! share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the cloud away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
Blest — as the Mu...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e;
The crag is won, no more is seen
His Christian crest and haughty mien.
'Twas but an instant he restrained
That fiery barb so sternly reined;
'Twas but a moment that he stood,
Then sped as if by death pursued;
But in that instant 0'er his soul
Winters of memory seemed to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years:
What felt he then, at once opprest
By all that most distr...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...you think as we peddle a card of pins the counter will fade away,
And again we'll be seeing the sand-bag rims, and the barb-wire's misty grey?
As a flat voice asks for a pound of tea, don't you fancy we'll hear instead
The night-wind moan and the soothing drone of the packet that's overhead?
Don't you guess that the things we're seeing now will haunt us through all the years;
Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears;
Life's pattern picked with a scarlet th...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...hich against you rise in arms:
Word-peckers, paper-rats, book-scorpions,
Of wit corrupted, the unfashioned sons.
The barb?d censurers begin to look
Like the grim consistory on thy book;
And on each line cast a reforming eye,
Severer than the young presbytery.
Till when in vain they have thee all perused,
You shall, for being faultless, be accused.
Some reading your Lucasta will allege
You wronged in her the House's privelege.
Some that you under sequestration are, ...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...rican kopjes,
Only the dust of their wheels,
Only a bolted commando,
Only our guns at their heels . . .
Only a little barb-wire,
Only a natural fort,
Only "by sections retire,"
Only "regret to report! "
Then mock not the .African kopje,
Especially when it is twins,
One sharp and one table-topped kopje
For that's where the trouble begins.
You never can be, etc.
Only two African kopjes
Baited the same as before--
Only we've had it so often,
Only we're taking no mo...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
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